Many people would rather go to the dentist than speak in public. I am not one of those people. Quite frankly, I really get a kick out of speaking about topics I am passionate about in front of an audience.Yesterday was no exception.

I was one of three “mommy activists” on a panel at the Canadian Organic Growers conference. One mom, Fran Murrell came all the way from Australia. She spoke about her group,   MADGE -Mothers Are Demystifying Genetic Engineering. Check out her website www.madge.org.au.

Another mom, Susan Smith, is one of the founding members of a not-for-profit agricultural community land trust known as ROSE (Redeeming Our Soil Economically).  ROSE is dedicated to caring for Sunnivue Farm northwest of London, Ontario.

The moderator of the panel Allison Savage a food blogger who created Radishes and Rhubarb, a blog that contains great recipes and beautiful photos.

As I promised during my presentation, to save trees, I am posting my resource links here on my blog. I know how it is at conferences, we all pick up loads of handouts. They either get lost in a pile or tossed. With my method, you’ll never lose the links, they’ll always be here!

Just click on the colored links and you’ll be directed right to the sites! Enjoy!

BSF Action Plan- this plan along with many other resources on the Better School Food website has stood the test of time. Check it out and get involved with school food in your community.

Nourish curriculum- this free downloadable middle school curriculum is fabulous. It can be facilitated by teachers or parents. I’m betting scout troops could use it towards a badge too.I gave  a review of Nourish on the Better School Food blog.

Jeff Rubin- this Canadian economist is on the spunky side, which is good since most economists are pretty dull to listen too. Jeff’s message: your world is gonna get a whole lot smaller as the price of oil goes up and its availability goes down. Watch one of his talks on You Tube, I promise you won’t be bored!

The Alberta Tar sands has the potential to create massive damage to Canada’s water supply and environment in general.  Greenpeace has been working hard to raise awareness of this problem.

In the USA, our big problem that is destroying watersheds Hydro fracking: the movie GASLAND tells the story well.

Gardens are the answer! What was your question? Kitchen Gardener’s International is a great garden resource for home, school and community gardens.

My Movie list Help your community to raise it’s Food IQ by setting up a film series at your local library, community center or other venue. Include a pot-luck and make it a regular community building event. Here’s a handful of my favorite films.

Ingreedients is an eye opening look into things you can’t pronounce on food labels.

Food INC this film is a must see for a wake up call about our food system.

King Corn is a great movie about corn in America. Filmmakers Ian Cheney and Kurt Ellis have gone on to do even more wonderful things. They are founding members of Food Corps and have a new movie out called, Truck Farm.

How to Boil a Frog is one of my most favorite new movies and it’s Canadian to boot!  It was just nominated for the Writers Guild of Canada Screenwriting award. It’s a comedy about the environment, how’s that for different?

The World According to Monsanto is a tremendously important film for anyone who cares about the food they eat.  You can watch the whole movie on YouTube or buy the DVD

The Real Dirt on Farmer John is a fun story about the history of farmland in America.

Additional movies

Tapped is a movie about the impact of bottled water.

And This is My Garden is a new film about school gardens that was created in Canada and has been screening there since 2010.

FRESH is a movie similar to Food Inc. but is a bit more sweeter and gentler.

Killer at Large is a movie about obesity. I have a cameo appearance in this film. You’ll get to see me raising hell in DC at a hearing for food advertising to kids.

2 Angry Moms is  a movie about school food activism. I am one of the Two Angry Moms, I am not the filmmaker, I am the trouble maker.

My book list is another fun way to build community and raise the consciousness of food related issues. Work with your local librarian or your PTA/PTO to start a book club.

Food Rules is Michael Pollan’s lastest book. Its short, its sweet and very digestible. See how many of the 64 food rules you can adopt for your own.

Chew on This is a middle school version of Eric Schlosser’s classic book, Fast Food Nation. Well worth the read for kids and grownups alike.

How to Grow a School Garden: A Guide for Parents and Teachers book

The bottom line message of my presentation is this: STIR THE POT! Don’t be afraid to make some trouble. Don’t say silent in the face of our kids being poisoned. Even if your kid seems to eating good food, trust me, all of our kids are connected. Do something to raise the Food IQ in your community. The rewards are numerous.

I have a grand opportunity tomorrow. NY Congresswoman Rep. Nita Lowey has invited me to a discussion on childhood obesity with Dr. Thomas Frieden, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control. Dr. Frieden was the NYC Health commissioner from 2002 to 2009. This guy  was the driving force behind some significant health policies in NYC, namely the workplace smoking ban, the trans fat ban and the implementation of  public calorie counts in places like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts.

I could go on and on about how both the trans fat ban and calorie counts didn’t end up being all that effective in improving the food environments of NYC, but I’m not gonna go there. Dr. Frieden deserves kudos for putting these bold food policies in place and going up against the NRA (National Restaurant Association) and other food industry lobbyists such as the Center for Consumer Freedom.

So far, our approach to the exploding obesity epidemic has done next to nothing to improve eating habits of Americans. Its time to think outside of the box.What would be the right words to say to the head of the CDC that would inspire him to take this approach?

My goal is to share my vision of school food reform with the good doc. School food reform is not about building a better chicken nugget or pumping up the pizza with whole wheat crust and low fat cheese.  Like calorie counts, these strategies do nothing to change the poor eating behaviors of America’s kids.

What we must do is raise the Food IQ and transform the culture of food in each and every school district in the USA. How could the CDC go about doing that?  They would be smart to hire me as a consultant. My four point plan includes proven strategies that will increase veggie consumption and lead to more informed eaters.

• Vegetable gardens in every school complete with composting projects

When kids grow food, picky eating behavior decreases and respect for real food increases. Composting of vegetable scraps is a great science project that reduces waste disposal costs, improves the environment and provides a nutrient rich soil amendment for those gardens.

• Food based film series open to the entire community

There are many excellent movies that can help to build Food IQ in an entertaining and informative way. These films will get people talking about the many food based issues that we are facing.

• Cooking classes

Research from Harvard shows that those who cook food tend to be more healthier than those who don’t. This trend crosses all socioeconomic lines. We’ve got to get our kids off the couch and into the kitchen! Require them to be able to prepare 10 meals from scratch as a requirement for graduation.

• Integration of food based education into core curriculum

Food can be seamlessly integrated into history/social studies, science, math and english. Learning about misleading food labeling claims which could easily become part of a unit on critical thinking skills- something all kids and grown ups could use more of.

One way to get this good stuff going into schools across the country would be the Food Corps, think Peace Corps but with food. FoodCorps members will build Farm to School supply chains, expand food system and nutrition education programs, and build and tend school food gardens.

The CDC can also look to the 200+ Slow Food chapters  across the country who are involved with Slow Food in Schools projects. This nationwide network of community based food education projects range from school gardens to cooking classes, to farm to school initiatives.  With CDC support, both the Food Corps and Slow Food in Schools can be the paradigm shift that turns this health crisis around better than any new, improved chicken nugget ever could!

This week at Gilda’s Club Westchester, I’ll be teaching one of my most favorite classes: Diet Mythology. I first came up with this topic way back in 2006 when I was teaching a course entitled American Food Culture for non native speakers of English at Manhattanville College. Diet myths continue to grow and circulate thanks to well meaning but mis-informed nutritionists and the mainstream media.The latest crazy one is that chocolate milk is some sort of health food (not!).

Here are a few of the diet myths many of us believe:

• FAT makes you FAT.
• Calories count.
• Low carb or no carb is the best.
• The government is looking out for our best interests.
• Losing weight boils down to eating less and exercising more.
• Fasting and de-toxing plans help you lose weight and regain health.
• Supplements can burn fat and boost our metabolism.
• You can substitute meals with replacement bars or drinks to keep the weight off.

What’s your favorite diet myth? Post them in the comments section, I’ll add them to my collection!

Earlier this week, I wrote a guest post in The Slow Cook and the Better DC School Food blogs about sugar in schools. In this article, I barely scraped the surface of this issue. Sugars are not just “empty calories”, sugar is a major anti-nutrient that can wreck havoc with your health.

The confusion over sugar continues. After all, fruit contains sugar, and what about beets and carrots?  My teacher and mentor Joan Gussow  once famously said  “I prefer butter to margarine because I trust cows more than chemists.”  I too, trust Mother Nature more than food companies. Carrots, beets and fruit are fine. In fact, they are really good for you!

Nowadays, many people understand that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is bad news. The beverage industry is responding by putting “cane sugar” into their drinks. Jones Soda boasts of having “pure cane sugar” in their soda, Pepsi is now boasting of “real sugar” in their Throwback brands that are being blasted all over Facebook and Twitter.  Vitamin Water with “crystalline fructose” is now showing up as a healthier alternative in school cafeterias (its not!).

Somehow consumers didn’t get the big picture message: refined sugar is bad for you! That refined sugar could have aliases like HFCS or cane sugar or crystalline fructose (found in Coca Cola’s Vitamin Water). All of this stuff will rot your teeth, expand your waistline, raise your cholesterol, the list goes on and on.

The World Health Organization defines free sugars as all monosaccharides and disaccharides added to foods by the manufacturer, cook or consumer, plus sugars naturally present in honey, syrups and fruit juices.

One other point worth mentioning: fruit juice = sugar hit. A glass of 100% juice is NOT the same as eating a piece of fruit! As a matter of fact, your morning glass of OJ can be contributing to your high cholesterol. Parents who think they are doing their kids a favor by giving them Minute Maid Lemonade or  Snapple 100% juice for an afterschool snack are damaging their kid’s livers, making them even more hungry, and of course, helping to make their dentists rich.

Apparently, fructose makes it so you don’t feel full. Makes complete sense that food manufacturers would want to use HFCS in their products. If you don’t feel full, you’ll keep eating and drinking. Great for a food company’s shareholders, not so great for your health.

NYC Mayor Bloomberg and the Center for Science in the Public Interest have declared war on salt. They claim salt is a major factor in heart disease and stroke.  Perhaps they should take a good long look at sugar! They’ll find a connection to diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and much much more.

Bottom line:

Eat Real Food. Drink Water.

When you see partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil on a food label, think beyond trans fat! This super cheap oil is one of the most toxic ingredients in processed food today, let me count a few ways:

#1 Cotton is not a food! These cottonseeds are a left over by product of producing cotton fiber. Common sense will tell you, it’s not a food, we probably shouldn’t be eating it.

#2 Cotton is one of the most toxic crops. While only three percent of the world’s farming acreage is cotton, these crops are sprayed with up to 25 percent of the world’s pesticides and herbicides, including some of the most toxic. Therefore cottonseed oil has an extremely high level of pesticide residue. Pesticides that are not approved for food are sprayed on cotton crops, because once again, cotton is not a food (see #1)

#3 Cottonseed oil is extremely high in pro-inflammatory omega 6 fatty acids. The ratio of omega 6:omega 3 in cottonseed oil is around 259:1. If you are supplementing with fish oil or flax oil to increase your anti-inflammatory omega 3 levels, and you ingest even a little bit of cottonseed oil, you’re gonna need gallons of omega 3 to balance that out!

#4 GMOs Genetically engineered (GE) cotton is another problem. Playing on concerns about pesticides, Monsanto has pushed GE cottonseeds onto the market in more than a half-dozen countries as the “green alternative” for cotton growers. In terms of human health hazards, herbicide-resistant GE cotton plants–and their oil and seed derivatives–contain foreign proteins, bacteria, viral promoters, and antibiotic resistant genes–food ingredients that humans have never eaten before. These GE plants and their derivatives are unlabeled and untested for hazards to human health and the environment. These cotton plants are gene-spliced so that the cotton plant emits its own pesticide, or else the plant is genetically engineered to be able to survive mega-doses of powerful pesticides.

All in all, when I see cottonseed oil as an ingredient on a packaged food product, I quickly come to the conclusion that this edible foodlike substance is hazardous to my and my family’s health.  Sadly, Girl Scout Cookies are loaded with this hazardous, toxic ingredient.

While you’re at it, make sure the cotton clothing you buy is organic. Wear it, don’t eat it!

Things are looking up when it comes to the health of our kids. Two days ago, Michelle Obama announced a comprehensive initiative to end childhood obesity in a generation. The program, Let’s Move includes a broad base of smart ideas, like eliminating food deserts, giving parents better information about food, improving the school lunch program and increasing physical activity. Michelle’s words brought be to tears because she spoke from the heart with her experience as a busy mom in a way that transcends the intellectual discussion.  I hope to find a way to work with her to help build the nation’s Food IQ

Last night was equally inspiring, Chef Jamie Oliver accepted the TED Award. Here’s his “wish”

“I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.”

How perfect is this? He’s in direct alignment with the First Lady’s plan. We need likable chefs like Jamie to help bring this issue into the living rooms of all Americans. His ABC show, Jamie’s Food Revolution will do just that in mid March.

There’s one point that both Michelle and Jamie need to include which I don’t yet see. It’s not a fun thing to talk about but it’s as big and important as childhood obesity. It’s our oil problem. It seems the world is running low on cheap fossil fuel. That impacts everything we do, especially eating!  We need to include Peak Oil in the planning of this undertaking. That means more local foods, more gardens in schools and communities, less packaging (note: plastic is made from petroleum!), more drinking fountains.  I hope we include this in the discussion.  Jamie and Michelle, call me! I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work!

photo credit: YoAmes

This week, 4th year medical students at New York Medical College learned about inexpensive and highly effective edible tools for healing. Kale, quinoa, ginger, turmeric, garlic and more. They also discovered the power of mindful eating along with the health benefits of good quality dark chocolate. They were horrified to consider the toxic food environment that the majority of their patients dwell in on a daily basis.

Thanks to the pioneering spirit of Dr. Ronald Whitmont, a physician and homeopath, these students are learning about complementary and alternative medicine in a 4 week rotation. I got them for 2 days to explore food as a healing tool along with some aspects of mind body nutrition. Students spent one session learning about food  through the lens of  both western herbology and Chinese medicine. They learned how dark green leafy vegetables support bone health, prevent macular degeneration and  supply essential micronutrients often missing in the Standard American Diet. Most importantly, they learned how easy, inexpensive and delicious it can be to prepare a health supportive meal with their own very skilled hands. Medical students and physicians must know their anatomy by heart: every bone, muscle, nerve and artery. It seems to me that they need to understand every ingredient in the American diet too. What ingredients can build health and alleviate chronic health issues?  What ingredients can undermine optimal  immunity?  Which ingredients support digestion and facilitate healing?

Food is a major player in health and disease, considering the fact that 80% of chronic disease is related to diet. It seems to me that medical schools should be devoting at least a semester to the impact of food on health. While nutrition education is also sorely lacking in medical schools, the systems approach offered by studying food gives health professionals deep and valuable insight into the health and well being of their patients. We don’t eat nutrients, we eat food.  Doctors need to be up on the latest food related trends and need to be able to walk their talk at the end of their own forks.

I look forward to doing more of this work in the months ahead.

Tell me and I will forget.

Show me and I may remember.

Involve me and I will understand.

~Chinese proverb

The latest research shows that nutrition education is not working! It is ineffective in creating behavior change in getting our kids to eat more veggies. So much time, money and energy has been spent in our schools to teach kids nutrition and we’ve gotten nowhere.

The pyramid is part of the problem. Why are we wasting time teaching our kids a government sanctioned official word on nutrition that just doesn’t stick?

Besides being uninspiring, the USDA food pyramid is full of conflicts of interest with the food industry, meat and dairy lobbies. If we want our kids to really learn something beyond being able to regurgitate facts and figures for a test, we need them involved on a deeper level.

Much of what we’ve been told about nutrition has been misleading and has done more harm than good. This has led well meaning nutrition committees to focus on the details rather than looking at the big picture.

• Counting calories results in many people obsessing over calories, some to the extreme of eating disorders and yo-yo dieting. This faulty over-emphasis on energy balance has led the food industry to create “100 calorie” products. After all, 100 calories of junk is still junk! It reminds me of the “light” cigarettes my mom smoked in the early 70′s instead of quitting tobacco altogether. Focusing on calories takes us away from quality, all calories are not equal.

• Believing that fat makes you fat has spurned many low-fat food products that are higher in sugar and chemicals. Good quality fat is essential for brain and nervous system development. Many foods need fat present for optimal nutrient absorption. That’s why salad dressing needs to have fat in it. Once again, we must consider what good quality fat and oils are and work to stay away from poor quality fats.

• A misguided emphasis on nutrients has resulted in useless products like granola bars and hyped up cereals which are nothing but refined grains sprayed down with synthetic vitamins.

Loading up our school cafeterias with 100 calorie packs, baked chips, granola bars, baked chicken fingers and oven roasted tater tots which many consider to be “healthier” fare does not create a higher Food IQ for our kids nor does it make them healthier.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”~ Albert Einstein

Clearly when it comes to nutrition education and to our children’s health, we need a new approach. I suggest that we shift the emphasis away from nutrition and instead towards the four letter word that begins with F: Food! To build our Food IQ the right way, we must get our hands dirty and experience all that food has to offer.

We need to plant gardens everywhere; in schools, in childcare centers, summer camps, senior centers and in our communities. I’m thrilled that many grass roots school advocates have followed First Lady Michelle Obama’s lead planting a veggie garden at the White House and sharing it with students from a nearby school. Gardens involve and teach us about food and the world on many levels. Here’s how:

• When kids grow food, kids eat food! Gardens are a great solution to the epidemic of picky eating behaviors. Research shows that children who have been involved with growing food eat more veggies than young children who attend other schools and child care centers without garden programs.

• You can’t grow junk food! There are no artificial ingredients or significant allergens (gluten, dairy, soy) in a garden. You simply cannot become ill or obese from eating what grows in a garden.

• Growing food cultivates an environmental awareness helping our children to become stewards of the land. As concerns about climate change and peak oil continues grow, we may all need to become more involved with growing food.

• Gardens are the cure for nature deficit disorder. Keeping our kids away from screens and high tech for a while is useful. The garden helps us slow down; you can’t force a green bean to grow fast, you have to wait! This is an important antidote to our fast paced lives.

• With gas prices soaring and food costs following skyward, growing food makes more sense than ever for our wallets as well as our waistlines.Food security and food safety is more important than ever. Small, local, resilient sources of food are the way of the future.

I am now hopeful that gardens will be the start of a positive shift in a school district’s food culture. By cultivating garden projects which build Food IQ and ecoliteracy, perhaps cafeterias will shift further towards health supportive food that is better for our kids and for the environment. For instance, once everyone understands the environmental impact of New York school students eating apples coming all the way from Washington state( or further) vs. apples coming from farms in upstate NY, perhaps students will demand local sourcing of food. This roundabout way of impacting the cafeteria will help create a demand for fresh, local, real food, instead of low calorie fat free questionable food products.

It’s great to get your hands dirty and get growing. Our children’s children will be happy we did, Mother Earth will be thankful as well.

If you could wave a magic wand and cause your doctor to  have a brilliant Food IQ, what would she/he tell you about how to be healthy?

That magic wand is in my hand right now. I have a huge opportunity to impact the Food IQ of a nearby medical school as part of a new course in Complementary Alternative Medicine for 4th year medical students.  I will have these future physicians for 3 hours of lecture time plus a full day of “clinical rotation”.

I’ve already got the “clinical rotation” figured out. I’m going to take them on a tour of the toxic food environment: the supermarket. We’ll explore what is hype and what is health supporting. Time permitting, we’ll hop on over to the nearest health food store to see some more hype.

Of course, I’ll teach them the top ten toxic ingredients along with my evaluation continuum. They need to learn that language is important and the power of advertising/ health hype.  But I want to take it even deeper. I want to shake up their core belief system on health and healing. I want them to look in the mirror and begin with what is at the end of their  own fork.

So here’s a question for you:  What do YOU think your doctor should know about food? Post it in the comments section. Pass this around to your friends and family too, let’s get a good long discussion going so I can share it with the medical school.

The NY Times recently reported about a new food labeling system “Smart Choices” that will help consumers figure out what foods are better choices in the supermarket. Froot Loops, a smart choice? This one really takes the cake!

The president of the Smart Choices board is Dr.Eileen Kennedy. She is the dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. She says the program’s criteria were based on government dietary guidelines and widely accepted nutritional standards. This industry-backed marketing ploy–puts a green check mark on products that are determined to be “smarter food and beverage choices.” But the choices selected are anything but healthy.

The good news is that grass roots food activists are all over this new example of hypocrisy. Change.org‘s Sustanable Food page has a nice email letter that you can send to Dr. Kennedy and the rest of the high mucky mucks who have endorsed this latest health hype. Click here to get involved.

My system for evaluating food has no giant corporate sponsors. It’s based on my years of education, my experience as an eater and a parent of 3. It has a healthy dose of common sense thrown in for good measure.
I rate foods on a continuum from “Beneficial” to “Useful” to “Useless” to “Hazardous.” Beneficial foods include any food that is unprocessed or “whole,” with most of their nutrients intact (e.g. whole oat groats or steel cut oats). Useful foods are a little processed, but in a way that does not excessively diminish their nutritional value (e.g. old fashioned rolled oats). Useless foods are too processed to be considered “health augmenting” but not dangerous enough to be considered hazardous (instant oatmeal with sugar). Hazardous foods, however, are heavily processed and artificial – often having a negative impact on one’s health (e.g. instant oatmeal with “dinosaur eggs” in it).

Hazardous ingredients are simple: Things like high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), artificial colors (food dyes), and partially hydrogenated oils are clearly hazardous to our health. High-fructose corn syrup can raise LDL (“bad” cholesterol) levels and damage children’s livers. Certain food dyes have been found to cause behavioral issues in children, such as hyperactivity and ADD. Partially hydrogenated oils, on the other hand, contain unhealthy trans fats that increase insulin problems and predispose children to lifetimes of diabetes and obesity.

Contact me for more information about my House of Health, it makes more sense that the silliness that the food industry is feeding us!